cause we've got the kind of love it takes to solve them
by foxes in blue
Summary: Nick wakes up early one morning and notices something about his bunny that he's never noticed before. One-shot, fluff.


He sees them for the first time, up close, the first feeble rays of sunlight streaming into the grimy window above her bed. Three faint gashes, almost imperceptible under her fur, but Nick has nocturnal vision and his eyes are sharp. He wonders, passively, where they're from. On impulse and without realizing it, he reaches over and touches her face, gently running his paw across the thin scars. She starts to stir. He hurriedly takes his paw away. It's a Sunday morning and they don't get enough rest on the weekdays as it is. They sleep in, most Sundays, catching up on z's they missed over the previous week, languorously talking in bed as they slowly breathe in the start of the day. Being nocturnal, on most of these lazy Sunday mornings, Nick either has a hard time falling asleep the night before or wakes up before the sun rises.

He's moved too late. She shifts again, and her eyes are closed but he knows he's woken her up.

"Mmm?"

"Oh," he says, taking his paw away. "It's nothing, Carrots. Sorry."

She opens an eye and glances sideways at him through drooping lids. "Wuh?"

"Go back to sleep, sweetheart," he says. He doesn't know why, but he's nervous, somehow. Judy has always seemed so innocent. From the moment they met, he could smell it off her - the naivety, the shelteredness, that fresh-off-the-farm guileless purity. He had always believed that she had gone through life relatively unscathed. The scars on her face present an anomaly of sorts, and he's intrigued at the mystery they present.

She rolls over onto her side, facing him. "Oh c'mon," she mumbles, playfully pushing his shoulder, "sumthin's both'ring you." She yawns, and he can see them a little clearer now - the gashes move underneath her fur, stretching out, and then contracting back. Any regular mammal would probably miss them. But with his eyesight, and with the close proximity he is to her face, they're clearly visible, and he wonders why he never noticed them before.

She's got him. She always does. Being with an ex-conman for this long has sharpened her nose for bullshit. No point in trying to wiggle out of this one now.

"Well," he says, taking in a big gulp, "I mean, I just - you… I, uh… you have these -" He makes a vague gesture around his muzzle, but right away, she gets it.

"Oh." She props herself up on her elbow and puts a paw to her muzzle, blinking her eyes open. It's amazing, the way she can read his mind. She's looking down, a little bashful for some reason, as she absentmindedly caresses her own cheek. "You saw the scars."

He puts up two hands in self-defense, half-jokingly. "I never noticed them before, Carrots, I swear on Finnick's life."

It's half past six in the morning, and although the sun has started to rise, it's still fairly dim in Judy's apartment. She's not nocturnal, like him, and she can't see in the faded early morning light as well as he can. She sits up and reaches over Nick, flicking on the small lamp on the side table next to the bed.

"I…." She's avoiding his gaze, still, looking intently at his knees - faint bumps underneath the comforter. "When I was a kit…"

She takes a deep breath and puts her paw in his. "Listen, Nick, what I'm about to tell you… it's -"

"Hey," he says, " _hey hey hey_. It's okay, Carrots. You can tell me."

"I was… oh, maybe nine." She sighs. "We just did a skit for the school play, about careers. The thing I wanted most in the world, even then, was to be a police officer. So I, inevitably, decided to play a police officer. Or… well. Someone who wanted to be a police officer, anyway. I basically just had to say that that was what I wanted to be when I grew up.

"There was this bully in my class. His name was Gideon Grey. He…" she pauses and looks away for a moment. "He was a fox."

Nick's eyebrows slowly rise, but he tries to keep his expression neutral. It isn't working. Judy's eyes – those amethyst eyes he loves so much – fill with regret and she pauses, taking in a sharp breath and opening her mouth to say something else (to apologize? To take it back? Nick can't tell, but he hopes she doesn't stop herself here, not for his sake). It hurts him, but he knows. She needs this, maybe even more than he does.

Judy looks down again, and it's clear that whatever it was she wanted to say—a self-interrupting diversion, he can already tell—isn't going to be said. She continues on with her story. "Anyway, he was one of only a few foxes in Bunnyburrow, and he was so mean to everybody. He picked on me a _lot_ , though. I was never scared of him—"

"Of course you weren't," Nick says, softly. He squeezes her paw. She gives him a weak smile and he gives her a gentle nod in return, not unlike the nod he gave her before she gave her first press conference (she still cringes at the memory). She doesn't see it all the time, but when it happens, she knows that Nick is rooting for her. Even when the facts sting and the words that tumble reluctantly out of her mouth open old wounds he has that will probably never heal. He's rooting for her, despite the fact that deeply ingrained in their biology, everything he is—both him and this bully of a fox from twenty years ago—goes against everything she is. In that moment, he remembers just how much they're _not_ supposed to be together. Yet here they are.

She keeps going. "After the play, I saw him bullying one of my friends, this kid John. Gideon had shoved him to the ground and taken all his carnival tickets. So I got in there, still in the police officer uniform I made for the play, and tried to get my friend's tickets back. Which I did."

"…So… where do the scars come in?"

"Oh. Right. Well, Gideon was…annoyed, I guess. He made fun of me for being a bunny who wanted to be a cop. And he took his claws out and scratched my face."

"Oh, Carrots."

She smiles. "Really, it's… it's nothing, Nick-"

"No, it's not nothing."

"I mean, gosh, it was so long ago, and-"

"And I'm glad you told me." 

His paw is cupping her cheek, right where the scars are. When he smiles at her, his eyes are warm. She holds on to his paw and they sit that way for a moment. Nick chuckles good-naturedly. "I mean, sweet Gorgonzola almighty, Carrots, no wonder you were such a nervous mess around me all the time! And here I was, thinking it was just my devilish charm and boyishly handsome good looks."

"Har, har, Slick." She pushes his shoulder playfully and rolls her eyes. "Oh please. Don't flatter yourself."

"Really, though," he says, "I… wow. I had no idea. It all makes so much sense now."

"It's not an excuse for the crappy things I did, Nick."

"I'm not saying that it is. It's just…I guess I didn't understand it then the way I do now. All those presumptions…that whole thing about me being, what was it you said? Articulate?" He's laughing again, a little bit, but she knows he just doesn't want them to feel uncomfortable.

"I'll always regret the way I acted. The things I did. I mean you, of all animals, know how sorry I'll always be. But…in a way, you're right. I don't think I even realized it. That whole thing, with Gideon Grey… I thought I was being brave. I just… brushed it off. Turns out it mattered to me a lot more than I realized. That first day that I saw you, it wasn't like I had you pegged for a Gideon or that I even remembered him at all. It was just… you have this one image in your head for _years_ about how a certain _thing_ or _animal_ or _idea_ works and it sticks, even if you don't want it to."

He doesn't know what to say. Or maybe he does, he just doesn't know how to say it. Maybe it'll take a while before he finds the words. Maybe days. Weeks. Years, even. But he knows one thing: he's glad he has all that time with her to figure it out.

After a few moments of just silence, just dust motes in the air and two pairs of green and violet eyes glowing in the pale morning light, she says something again. Quietly, so quietly that he can hardly hear her. "It takes a special sort of mammal to break it apart."

He leans over and kisses her, a long and soft kiss that he hopes will be enough to say what exactly it is he feels. For now, anyway. A placeholder of sorts. While he's looking for the words. When they part, he sees a contented sort of tranquility wash over her face, like the opposite of a shadow. She leans back into her pillow, a trace of a smile on her lips, and he lies on his side, propping up his head with one paw.

"Now, what was it you said about me being boyishly handsome?"

"Nick!" she laughs, pushing him off.

They start the rest of their Sunday morning like they always do. Languorously talking in bed as they slowly breathe in the start of the day.


End file.
